STORIES TO TELL

TULSA CERAMIC ARTIST EXPRESSES DEEP EMOTION THROUGH CLAY.

BY JORDAN COX

For Colombian American artist Amy Sanders de Melo, ceramics is about celebrating imperfections. A ngerprint in clay, a crooked rim on a cup — each detail tells the story of an art form that’s very sensory and human. Sanders de Melo keeps the story going and has made ceramics her medium for telling others’ stories and encouraging them in the process.

As a child, Sanders de Melo was exposed to art regularly. Her childhood was spent on a farm in Kellyville with a cowboy father whose creative expression included building their family home, and a mother whose interest in culture allowed her upbringing to be lled with art, vibrant colors, museums and frequent trips to Colombia, where her mother has dual citizenship and still calls home. Sanders de Melo pursued painting in high school and studied lm at the University of Oklahoma.

“Art is so humbling and vulnerable,” she says. “I don’t love it every single day, but I’ve seen the impact, so that’s what keeps me going.” is Braille series inspired her to tell the sto- ries of others, and in 2021 the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition’s rive grant allowed her to begin “Invisible Voices,” an ongoing project.

She delved into ceramics as a form of therapy in response to a rare condition she su ers that is causing her to slowly lose her sight. She tested her ability to sustain her passion for ceramics by completing projects blindfolded, expressing her emotions literally by writing what she was feeling in Braille onto her pieces.

“ e vision of the project was to incorporate voices of people that are on the fringe of society,” Sanders de Melo says. She collected narratives from past and current Oklahoma residents and created a series of vessels to represent each individual. She then textured each story in Braille by hand onto the vessels’ surfaces. Shown last year at artist-run nonpro t Resonator Institute in Norman, the collection is a chance to bring unlikely individuals together into conversation, understanding and healing, she says.

Currently, Sanders de Melo is an instructor, studio assistant and resident at Red Heat Ceramic Art Studio in Tulsa. She also sits on the committee for the Sunny Dayz Mural Festival — a public art initiative created to empower and celebrate women and non-binary artists and muralists — which will hold its third annual event this September in the Pearl District.

“My biggest hope is to continue making work that tells stories and encourages healing,” she says. TP